Mountains Like Brown Bison
by vickrok
Summary: Walt and Vic have a cryptic conversation. One shot.


**This is a one shot, sort of experimental thing. There was an unexpected half hour lull in the barrage of work, and I was thinking about Hemingway.**

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Mountains Like Brown Bison

The mountains across the valley of the Powder were rounded and brown. On this side it was hot and the restaurant was between the highway and the southeast bank of the river in the sun. There was a sliding glass door open to the bar and at the far corner of the patio the shade of a single ponderosa. The Sheriff and the younger woman with him sat at a table in the shade by the wood railing. There was no breeze.

"You getting a beer?" the woman asked. She had taken off her sunglasses and put them on the table.

"It's hot," the man said. "And we're not working."

"It's never hot like this."

"No."

"I could go for a beer."

The man walked to the open door. "Two Raniers," he said through it.

"Draft?" a woman's voice asked from inside.

"Bottles."

The waitress brought two longneck Raniers and two paper coasters. She put the coasters and the longnecks on the table and looked at the man and the woman. The woman was looking off at the range of mountains. They were brown and the trees in the basin were dry and faded.

"They look like buffalo," she said.

"Do they?" The man drank his beer.

"Don't they?"

"Maybe they do," the man said.

The woman looked at the open door. "Could we get something?"

"Sure. Like what?"

"Pretzels?

The man walked to the open door. "Can we get some pretzels."

"We don't have pretzels."

"Peanuts?"

"We have peanuts."

"No pretzels," he called across the deck. "Peanuts?"

"Whatever," the woman said.

"I could get you the menu," said the waitress's voice from inside the bar.

"Should we order something?" the man called.

"I don't know," the woman said.

"Just the peanuts."

The man came back to the table with the bowl.

"I guess I don't know what I want," the woman said and picked up her beer.

"You know what you want."

"Really?" said the woman. "How do you know what I know?"

"Come on."

"Come on what?"

"Help me out here."

"I am helping. I said the mountains looked like buffalo, didn't I?"

"You did."

"And I said I wanted a beer. That helps."

"Remember the white calf?" the man asked.

"Of course."

"That was a bad time."

"A lot of the times have been bad."

The woman looked across the river valley at the mountains. "I never paid attention to them," she said. "I guess they don't really look like buffalo."

"Want another beer?"

"All right."

The man ordered two more beers through the open door and brought them back to the table.

"They're nice and cold," he said.

"Yeah."

"It wasn't a mistake, Vic," the man said. "Nothing to feel bad about."

The woman looked down at the wooden slats the table stood on.

"We shouldn't avoid talking about it."

The woman did not respond.

"It wasn't wrong."

"It wasn't much of anything," she said.

"Exactly."

"Right."

The woman stood up and walked to the other end of the deck in the sun. Across the Powder were trees along the banks and an alfalfa field. Beyond the field of alfalfa were the mountains.

"It would be easy enough to forget," she said. "Then everything could be like it was."

"What?" The man stood and stepped into the sunlight.

"Everything could go back to the way it was."

"Would you want that?" he said.

"Maybe."

"Weren't we miserable?"

"Not together we weren't."

"Separate, though. Separate and miserable."

"Speak for yourself. I was fine."

"Come back in the shade," he said. "Please."

They sat down at the table and the woman looked out across the river and the man looked at her and at his beer bottle.

"I want you to know," he said, "we can handle this however you want."

"Is there anything to handle? Why are we here?"

"To talk. It was something."

"You just agreed it wasn't," the woman said.

"I'm changing my story."

"Can we not talk about this?"

"I don't want to bury it."

"What do you want then? To do it again?"

"Why not?"

"This is what you don't want. It's your reason for everything. Your reason for her."

"That was something else."

"That was this," the woman said.

He looked at his hand on the bottle.

"This is you," the man said. "This is me and you."

"Stop."

The waitress came out through the open door and put the check down on the damp table.

"I can ring you up at the bar when you're ready."

When the waitress was gone, the woman said, "Is she trying to get rid of us?"

"I'll go take care of this."

She smiled at him. "All right. Then come back and we'll finish."

He took the check to the bar and paid. Through the open door, he watched her looking out at the mountains. A man and a woman were talking at a table in the dark corner. He came out onto the deck and she smiled at him.

"Yes," he said. "I want to do it again."

"But we're almost home free."

"But we're not."


End file.
